


Hidden Gems

by Truthwatcher_Vez



Series: Chasms Between [1]
Category: Cosmere - Brandon Sanderson, Stormlight Archive - Brandon Sanderson
Genre: M/M, Spoilers, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28757256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Truthwatcher_Vez/pseuds/Truthwatcher_Vez
Summary: Renarin spends time in the Urithiru gem archive and obsesses about Rlain.
Relationships: Renarin Kholin/Rlain
Series: Chasms Between [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2140251
Comments: 14
Kudos: 38





	Hidden Gems

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers for Words of Radiance and Oathbringer. One very minor spoiler for Rhythm of War. Takes place between chapters 104 and 111 of Oathbringer.
> 
> Deliberate minor non-canon elements. First attempt at a Stormlight fic; constructive feedback welcomed.

Drawer 20-10, zircon: _“As the duly appointed keepers of the perfect gems, we of the Elsecallers have taken the burden of protecting the ruby nicknamed Honor’s Drop. Let it be re…c…o…r…d…e…d”_

Renarin Kholin finished the final T-set letter of the passage, sitting back in his chair with a sigh and absently massaging his cramping hand. Tiny, careful movements were required for the women’s script, so different from the bold strokes used to create traditional Alethi glyphs. His newly-inked shapes were sloppy and lopsided compared to the smooth lines of the original transcription. Renarin set his pen on the table, absently flexing his tired fingers.

Still, he couldn’t help but feel a quiet sense of accomplishment looking down at the work in progress. He’d been coming here lately, to the library room in the basement of Urithiru, because he’d wanted to have his own copies of the transcriptions from the gem records. The wave-like characters of the modern women’s script, as well as the older Alethelan letters, were scrawled across paper after paper. Over a hundred wide strips were piled up around his work table. He’d originally started with full pages, but the strips could more easily be organized in different combinations. The papers also bore the annotations of glyph phonemes and numbers that came more easily to him.

The scribing also gave him a chance to spend more time in this room, in the basement of Urithiru. He glanced over his shoulder at the tile-lined wall behind him. Only a handful of the hidden drawers were open right now. The priceless contents of those drawers had been dispersed to other tables, glinting red and violet and blue in the steady light of spheres. Occasionally one of the scholars would interrupt Renarin’s work with a request to infuse one of the gemstones so that some aspect of the encoded message could be examined. Shallan had gone to Kholinar and Jasnah was attending to other business in the tower today, so Renarin was the only one they could ask. He didn’t mind. The scholars had come to tolerate his presence here, and he was glad that he could be useful to them in return.

The records of the Lost Radiants had been a marvelous find. However, there was something more here, a mystery that tickled at the back of Renarin’s thoughts. He wasn’t convinced that this room had given up all of its secrets.

 _Truthwatcher,_ Glys murmured in agreement from his hiding spot within Renarin. The spren insisted on continuing to use that name for what they had become, even though there were… irregularities. Still, it seemed mostly to fit. Renarin had to admit that his odd spren seemed to be most engaged, most active when they were faced with some sort of problem to solve.

He was still reflecting on this when he realized that the library room had suddenly gone very quiet. The scholars had been more boisterous today without Jasnah’s stern presence to keep them in line. In fact, several heated shouting matches had broken out at various times. Even as afternoon bled into evening and some of the scholars left for other duties or to catch a meal, the buzz of conversation in the room had remained loud. Now, there was near total silence.

Renarin looked away from the gemstone drawers, towards the front of the room. Two men in Bridge Four uniforms stood there, just inside the doorway. It was Leyten and… Renarin’s heart did a little flip-flop in his chest. Of course. Rlain.

Was this the first time Rlain had been to the gem archive? The half-dozen scholars standing around the room projected wariness, suspicion, or open hostility. Rlain set his spear against the wall and let go of it, standing placidly, unthreatening. He seemed outwardly unaffected by the glares, but his discomfort and resignation were painfully obvious to Renarin.

Renarnin stood up abruptly, his chair scraping loudly across the stone floor. It produced the desired effect, as abruptly all of the eyes in the room tracked to him at the sound. Renarin found himself fidgeting under the weight of that sudden attention, and he shoved his hands into his pockets, closing a fist around his metal box. “I…uh, I’m almost done here. Did Father send for me?”

The words were reminder--the Blackthorn personally approved of these men. It seemed to diffuse some of the tension in the air as Leyten and Rlain crossed the room towards him. They stopped in front of Renarin’s table as the background murmur of conversation started up again.

“Not your father,” Leyten stated. “Rock said you’ve been here all day.”

Renarin blinked. “Yes?”

“Well, the scholars don’t allow food around all their precious papers. So you’ve been ordered back to the Bridge Four barracks to get something to eat.”

“Oh.” Renarin had endured lectures from Rock before. Air, he’d been informed, even the beautifully thin air of Urithiru, was no substitute for real food. Renarin felt the corners of his mouth curve up in an entirely involuntary grin. Rock outranked him, of course, and the Horneater lieutenant was perfectly comfortable giving orders to the son of Highprince Dalinar Kholin. “Did he mean right away? I’d like to just… straighten things up first.”

Leyten waved a hand at the table to indicate that it wasn’t urgent as long as the order was obeyed. Renarin let go of his metal box and dropped back into his chair, shuffling and stacking the strips of paper he’d been working on earlier.

“What’s this?” Rlain was looking with some interest at one corner of the workspace, examining a page jammed full of cramped glyphs. It was one of Renarin’s original pages, before he’d set to work on the transcribing. Gem drawer numbers had been organized into a matrix at the top, and Renarin had run through a few different permutations before deciding that he needed more information.

“Hm?” Renarin’s heart flip-flopped again, and he had to remind himself to breathe. “Oh, it’s like the stormwardens.”

Rlain and Leyten both gave him blank looks.

Renarin mentally kicked himself. _Don’t skip steps._ “Stormwardens,” Renarin backed up and tried again. “You know, to determine the date of the next highstorm. They take existing information and then extrapolate using mathematical equations. It’s like that. Well, not quite the same. Similar.”

Renarin had always been good with numbers, but these novel methods of calculation had opened up a whole new world to him. He’d absorbed the basics in just a few conversations with Elthebar and the other stormwardens who frequented the library rooms.

Jasnah had warned him about spending too much time with “those charlatans”, and so he’d barely spoken to them in recent days to avoid antagonizing her. However, he couldn’t stop himself from continuing to experiment with their techniques. Glys had been surprisingly helpful, even catching some of his beginner’s mistakes.

“Huh,” Leyten looked distinctly uncomfortable, half-turning away. He began scanning carefully over the room, as if securing it against hidden threats.

Rlain, however… Rlain looked genuinely interested, humming a soft rhythm as he perused the page. Warmed by the attention, Renarin volunteered a brief explanation for the placement of the numbers in the matrix. Rlain nodded, seeming to follow the reasoning intuitively.

Rlain had mentioned once in passing how he’d wound up in Bridge Four. Not much of a story, he’d claimed. As a listener spy in dullform, he’d been quicker with figures than his human master. That demonstration of intelligence from a slow and docile “parshman” had resulted in his transfer to the bridge crews, dramatically altering the trajectory of his life.

The listener wore warform now, a form known for its strength. He always spoke slowly and deliberately, in a way that consistently caused everyone to underestimate him. As if speaking slowly somehow prevented a person from thinking clearly or being observant. The lack of understanding from those around him frustrated Rlain sometimes. Renarin could definitely relate.

There had been few opportunities for Renarin to share his theories about the gem archive numbers with anyone before this. As he gestured towards the bottom of the page and described the purpose behind some of the equations there, he found himself speaking enthusiastically in spite of himself. Rlain bent closer, and Renarin’s heart sped up. He glanced up once, twice, taking in the neat red and black beard, the strong marbled features, the keen eyes. Renarin tried not to stumble over his words, feeling hot. _Almighty help me,_ he thought.

He’d had a crush on Rlain for weeks, now. He’d hardly realized it at first, though upon reflection it had almost certainly started that day out on the Shattered Plains when Rock had first drawn attention to the listener bridgeman sitting off by himself. Now Renarin found himself taking detours on the way to meetings, stepping out onto balconies to get a glimpse of Bridge Four while they performed drills on the Oathgate plateau. He was trapped in that giddy, conflicted phase, where he often plotted to find ways to spend time in Rlain’s company; and then when he succeeded he didn’t know quite what to do with himself.

Renarin had survived infatuation before. It was messy and awkward, but he’d found that if he sat on his emotions long enough, it eventually went away. …Usually because it didn’t take long for him to see past a handsome face, to learn the truth of the person hidden beneath the surface. Adolin’s former friend Jakamav had been a not-so-recent and very stark case in point.

 _This is different,_ part of him whispered. _This is Bridge Four._ Renarin had come to trust the men of Bridge Four, in a way that he’d never trusted anyone but family. To his astonishment, they’d come to return that trust.

He’d learned a lot about Rlain over the past month. Bit by bit, picking up on fragments of conversation, listening to stories around a cook fire, and remembering things that Renarin himself had lived through but had failed to see the significance of at the time. Rlain had sacrificed everything he was for his own people, taking on dullform in order to collect intelligence during the War of Reckoning. Later, when he recognized the wrongness among the listeners, he’d turned around and risked imprisonment or execution by returning to the Alethi warcamps to bring warning.

Renarin kept his eyes downcast, acutely aware of Rlain’s presence on the other side of the table. The rhythm that Rlain was humming had changed. Noises often bothered Renarin, but not these. He could almost feel the soothing vibrations as if they were a current of cool water. It calmed him, letting him focus on the numbers until he reached the end of the last equation on the page.

Then his voice trailed off and he fidgeted in embarrassed silence, having run out of easy things to say.

“Thank you,” Rlain said simply. “For the explanation. This is important to you.”

 _He knows you,_ Glys said in his mind. _He understands._

“Y-yes,” Renarin managed, answering both of them. Rlain was still studying the paper, and Renarin dared to look up at him again.

 _Why him? Why now?_ Renarin thought, with an edge of desperation. The logical part of him recognized that there were _so many reasons_ why this was just never going to turn out well.

He’d meant the questions to be purely rhetorical ones. However, his sharp mind--always fascinated by an enigma, always quick to investigate a mystery, raced ahead of itself. Caught in that moment, he suddenly understood the answer. _Look past the handsome face. Look past the carapace armor and the crimson and ebony skin. Look past the differences that are there on the surface._

_See straight to the gemheart of one who is bright and brave and true._

_Stormfather._ He felt the heat rise in his face, expecting mortificationspren to appear around him at any moment. He fought the urge to let his forehead drop down onto the table so that he could put his arms over his head. This was not a reaction he’d ever had to Jakamav or any of the others. This felt like more than just infatuation. _I think maybe… I think I might be in trouble, this time._

He was saved by a loud bang halfway across the room. Leyten and Rlain both instinctively turned towards the noise. Recognizing the sound and grateful for the distraction, Renarin ducked his head to hide his deep blush, gathering up his research materials with shaking hands and feeling like one of the ten fools.

“This again!” an elderly ardent shouted. He slammed his hands down on a table a second time, red-faced and glaring furiously. “Why do you persist in questioning my translation!”

“Because you’re being a storming idiot!” A second ardent waved his hands in frustration, nearly upsetting the goblet of dun emeralds that stood on the table between them. “Open your ears and listen for once!”

“Why should I listen to absolute nonsense? The standardized usage from Altifeb’s Codex clearly supports my wording as correct!”

“…And the root word in the Alethelan northern dialect supports MY alternate interpretation. This revised translation preserves the linguistic precision, but completely lacks the heretical implications!”

It was the third such outburst in as many hours. Ardent Lenala, the scholar that Jasnah had left in charge in her absence, descended upon the pair of yelling scholars, her patience obviously worn thin. The younger ardent was sent packing to cool his head, while the elder was commanded to return the emeralds to drawer 30-20, where they would remain untouched until the following morning.

Some deep breaths and several very neat piles of paper later, Renarin rose to his feet. His face was still warm, but not unusually so. For once, he was grateful that he was so socially awkward all the storming time. If he seemed flustered over nothing at all, nobody would even think twice. “All done. I guess we shouldn’t keep Rock waiting.”

Rlain reclaimed his spear from beside the doorway, and the three of them stepped out into the hall with Leyten in the lead. Calmer now, Renarin listened to echo of their footsteps against the tiled walls as they headed towards the spiral staircase that led up to Urithiru’s ground floor. He found himself looking forward to the comfort of a warm Bridge Four meal and unexpected companionship.

For now, it was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Humble appreciation goes out to all the folks who maintain the Coppermind, and to everyone who shares their inspiring fanfic and fanart on the internet. I just discovered this fandom last month. Y’all are amazing.


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